Every morning is a brain cracking moment for me - what to cook for the whole day? I used to plan a night before but now I learn to just live from day to day. It would be a lot easier if I am not bringing the little ones to the wet market. Sometimes, it could mean a few missing items in my shopping cart and a second trip to the supermarket. But hey, I bet the little ones do enjoy such trip, don't they?

Ayam Kuzi, especially, with the many ingredients, I have got to make sure each ingredient is written down so that I will not miss out anything. Most of you may not have tried (or even heard of) this dish before, this is a Kelantanese curry chicken dish, thick and rich in flavours. Despite having grown up in Malaysia, I too, have not heard of it until these recent years, and I wonder why? The chicken is cooked in briyani aromatic spices together with the sweet sultanas and yoghurt, simmered and reduced to a sauce that capture all its essence, irresistibly pleasing to the palate! A dish that we should popularise!

Just like any other curry dishes, this dish is best prepared slightly ahead of time and left to sit for the flavours to mingle. It might look like a spicy dish but it really isn't. The base of this chicken dish is made up of fried shallot, and lots of them! So don't try to cut on the shallot, you will soon regret your decision!

What about the reddish appearance? You might ask. Tomato paste is the culprit!

Ayam Kuzi / Kuzi Chicken

Ingredients

1/2chicken

15 shallots, sliced and fried

3/4 cupwater

3 strandssaffron

30gsultana

1 tbspghee

2 tbsptomato paste

1 tspsugar

1/2 tsp salt

(A)

2 tspcoriander seed

1 tspfennel seed

1 tspcumin

1/2 inch ginger

1 inchfresh turmeric, or 1/2 tsp turmeric powder

2 slices galangal

(B)

2 cloves

1 star anise

2cardamom

1cinnamon

1lemongrass, bruised

Others

70mlyoghurt

125mlmilk

Cooking Directions

Blend ingredients (A) into paste.

In a pan, heat ghee, stir fry (A) and (B) till fragrant.

Add shallot, chicken and tomato paste, cook for 15 minutes.

Add milk, saffron, and water, cook till chicken become tender.

Add salt and sugar, stir in yoghurt, sultana, and cook for another 5 minutes.

Zha Jiang Mian, or fried sauce noodle, is one of my favorite food during school days. It is an inexpensive, simple yet delicious meal, and often time we made extra meat sauce so that it can be heated up easily and make a convenient quick meal afterwards.

As far as I remember, there was a decent Chinese food stall in my school canteen. The food portion was big, but I never had a problem finishing a big bowl of their zha jiang mian. Despite it sounded like a weird combination, I especially love to add their peanut sauce (which was meant for steamboat) in my noodle, its nutty fragrance goes surprisingly well with the meat sauce!

Whenever I had a longer lunch break, I would travel from a faculty to another just to have a taste of their noodle. However, something happened after I graduated. I didn't get the full story but I heard that they were closed down due to misuse of washing machine with their food! Erm.. washing machine for food?! Guess I better not to find out, at the very least, I could still retain my fond memories of them...

Now fast forward the time, gone are those days that I could finish a big bowl of zha jiang mian. With my current appetite, that big bowl of noodle is enough to feed me a whole day! So I make my own based on my portion, and surely I don't need a washing machine to do that!

During the weekend of 23rd August 2015, while some us are enjoying our leisure time, be it at home, shopping etc., a group of home cooks are wrecking their brain to produce the most creative and healthy baked dishes for their first ever Samsung cook-off competition.

Jointly sponsored by Samsung and Alce Nero, organized by Singapore Homecook Fanpage and held at TOTT Dunearn, this cook-off promote healthy home made dishes, and showcase how Samsung appliances and organic Alce Nero products can play an integral part in the healthy home cook setting.

Each contestant are provided with one brand-new Samsung Smart Oven, completed with Hot Blast and Slim Fry function. Most (if not, all) of the contestant are using this model oven for the first time, but none had any problem handling it, a proof that the oven is use friendly and produce superior result.

Adding to the excitement, top prizes were Samsung smart oven and TOTT vouchers, and basically no one would walk away empty handed from the competition! We were honored to have Samsung Senior Product Manager, Wan Wai San, Director, Executive Chef, Senior Master Mixologist Chef Ethan Leslie Leong, and Alce Nero Marketing Manager, Priscilla Tan as the judges of this competition.

Rice is the staple food in Asia, we serve rice alongside with other dishes such as vegetables, meat, or soup. Just like potatoes, rice can be cooked in many ways, it can be stir-fried, stewed, baked or cooked into one pot dish such as yam / taro rice, pineapple fried rice, olive rice etc.. There are countless ways to transform your plain rice into delicious meal but I had never encountered any recipe that gets any simpler than this.

El and Lyn take afternoon nap everyday. Once they are asleep, that is the time I hit the ground running. Cooking with them around is almost disastrous, with them whizzing around, and their swayer / bike parking all around the kitchen like mines awaiting to be kicked or stepped on, accidents are bound to happen. During some good days when they have longer resting time, I can then prepare more elaborate dishes but if not, even the rice can be transformed into a dish.

This cilantro lime rice is a breeze to make. It takes only 3 additional ingredients, less than 5 minutes of your time, and ta-dah... the plain white rice just had a make-over and it is now oh-so refreshing! The butter contribute largely to the flavour of the rice, hence selecting a good quality butter will enhance the taste tremendously. Sometimes when I am running out of green lime, I would substitute it with yellow lemon. Although they have slightly different fragrant, I guess it works too! Afterall, homecooks are used to working around ingredients and who knows, we may create something better than what the recipe calls for!Cilantro Lime Rice

Ingredients

1 cuprice

1 tbspbutter

1 tsplemon/lime zest

2 tbsplemon/lime juice

1/2 cupcilantro, chopped

water, as needed

Cooking Directions

Cook rice in rice cooker as per usual, but add in 1 tbsp butter together with water.

Stir in lemon zest, lemon juice, and chopped cilantro right before serving.

Indonesia is famous for their spekkoek, or kek lapis legit, which literally translated to sweet and sticky layer cake. Every time we visited Indonesia, we would always bring back some cakes, either as gifts or for self-consumption.

There are many brands out there, ranging from a few dollars per cake to $50+ per cake. So what contributed to the price difference? Well, what I understand from a cake master was that, the traditional layer cakes are made without egg whites, only yolks are used (imagine 30+ egg yolks per cake?) However, in order to cut cost, some bakeries may add in egg whites too. The volumn of a whipped egg white can be many folds compared to that of a whipped egg yolk. This resulted in a more cake-like texture rather than the rich texture produced by the traditional method.

To achieve the many thin layers of the cake, it is a rather labor intensive process. Hours are spent in order to bake the cake layer by layer, which requires much patience. However, the end product is certainly worth the effort. By just looking at those delicate layers, you got that sense of achievement already.

There are many variations available - pandan, cheese, coffee, prunes... Once you have master the basic cake, you can tweak it as much as you like and make your own concoction!

Kek Lapis Legit

Ingredients

380gbutter

35egg yolks

230gicing sugar

2 tbspbrandy/ rum

2 tbspcondensed milk

80g plain flour

2 tsp cake spices

Cooking Directions

Cream butter until soft.

In a separate bowl whisk egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy (around 10-15 minutes)

Add in brandy/rum and condense milk, beat till just combine.

Mix together egg yolks mixture with butter.

In another bowl mix together plain flour and cake spices. Sift in the flour to batter and mix well.

Layer baking paper at the bottom of the pan. Spoon around 2 - 2.5 tbsp of batter at the bottom of the cake pan, grill at 230C for 3 minutes or until brown.

Poke the cake with toothpick and flatten it with a piece of parchment paper.

Repeat step 6-7

For the last layer spoon in 3.5 tbsp of batter, grill at 200C until brown.

I used to buy chilli from Wendy's. After Wendy's decided to pull out from Singapore's market, we made up our mind that it is time to stop our 'chilii hunt' and make our own instead.

Turn out, this soup is super easy to make! And luckily, someone revealed to us a secret ingredient to this dish- cocoa powder! Don't shake your head just yet, it is only added in a small amount to bring out the depth of the flavor of chilli, and indeed it does.

This is a convenient dish which you can make ahead. It freezes well and heating it up is a breeze. Pair it with some crusty breads and your breakfast is ready!

Chilli With Chocolate

Ingredients

500gminced beef

1 onion, chopped

1red bell pepper, diced

2 tbspchilli powder

400gtomato paste

2fresh tomato

2 tspcumin

1/4 tspsalt

1 tbspcocoa powder

1 can (15 oz/ 432g)kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1 can (15 oz/ 432g)pinto beans, rinsed and drained

1 tbspbrown sugar

3garlic, chopped

200mlwater

Garnish

1 sprig ofspring onion, chopped

sour cream

Cooking Directions

In a pot, heat oil and stir fry onion until soft and brown.

Add bell pepper, garlic and minced meat. Break the meat into small pieces.

Cherry.... Chocolate... Fresh cream... Yea it is the Black Forest cake I am talking about! Black Forest cake is a delightful dessert and an all time classic. Despite the sprouting of many new designs of cake, these black beauty doesn't seem to lose out at all, you can still find them in almost any bakery shop. Making it cupcake size? It is simply an added fun!

All right, in fact, this is just to please my little ones who love everything in their mini size. That 'wow' look on their face? That is priceless.

This is a surprise-inside cupcake. A whole pitted cherry stay hidden inside the cake just right beneath the frosting! Here I used a new found favorite of mine - cooked flour frosting, but of course you may use any frosting that you are comfortable with.

I am not sure if this is considered kueh or pudding, how to categorise it? In my opinion, this is something in between. The texture is soft, a bit similar to custard but a tad more firm than pudding, and the cream corn added some nice crunches to it.

At first glance, my little ones didn't even want to touch it! Does it look that bad? Well, but after they tasted it, they couldn't stop eating and keep begging me to make it again. They even grumbled when I finished off the last bit of it!